Bad News

The toughest thing we have to do right now is honestly acknowledge the brute facts of our changed existence.

The era of perpetual, endless growth is done. We have now entered an era of perpetual contraction. This is because the supply of endless growth's fuel -- cheap oil -- is bound to contract in both the short and long run.

In recent years we've had only two major industries left in the U.S. which employed millions, car building and suburb building. One has vanished, and the other is about to.

Americans are generally not mentally prepared to face the tremendous economic dislocations now occurring. Whether the new administration is prepared to face facts remains to be seen. If Obama and his underlings carelessly start throwing around the word "growth," we'll know they're not engaged with the true state of affairs, and that will make things worse.

"Worse" means "disorderly." Food and fuel riots, general strikes, sectarian, racial, and ethnic violence. An administration that won't face facts won't have a handle on anything.

The three-bedroom, two-bath tract home as a standardized totem of the typical family life in this country is vanished, and the old model of the family farm (or hippie commune), with its vegetable garden, goat and chickens, wood stoves, and water supplied by a well or springbox, is destined to be the new standard. Land distribution and use will soon become very hot topics.

For much, much more on these and related subjects, read this.